"We understand the reach the Super Bowl provides, but with the significant increase in price, we simply can't justify the expense," GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick said in a statement, according to the Wall Street Journal. Over the past decade, GM has spent about $82 million on Super Bowl advertising, the paper said Monday, which makes it the third biggest advertiser behind Anheuser-Busch and Pepsi.

But GM is facing more than just an expense hurdle. It also has to compete with a new gold standard in automotive advertising: Chrysler's Super Bowl ads over the past two years.

Name me a recent car company Super Bowl ad that got as much buzz as the 2011 Chrysler spot, featuring Eminem, a choir and feisty words about Detroit. It coined the tag phrase "Imported From Detroit." This year, its "Halftime In America" spot featured Clint Eastwood and a rallying cry that some critics thought veered close to becoming an Obama administration campaign commercial.

To be sure, car companies will still advertise on the Super Bowl, and there are other ways besides boosterism to get attention. A lot of people liked Honda's Ferris Bueller ad this year, and the Volkswagen Darth Vader ad created a lot of joy for kids and parents alike, not to mention the tens of millions of hits the ad got on YouTube.

But in order to make an impact now, you've got to top Chrysler. That's really what we're talking about here, not simply the millions of dollars that an ad costs.

There's no doubt it's an expensive proposition. According to the Journal, ad time for the 2011 game cost $3.5 million for 30 seconds, and is up 59 percent since 2001, when an ad cost roughly $2.2 million.

If you hit the bulls eye, however, the pay off can be lasting. Since 2011, Chrysler has seen the impact of its Super Bowl ads in rising car market share and a much-improved image. In the same period, GM has seen its post bailout gains reverse, and has watched the Chevrolet Volt become a political football.

GM has pulled out of Super Bowl advertising before, as recently as 2009, and there's little doubt it will be back some day. As Chrysler has shown, a single Super Bowl ad can wake up the country to your potential and a successful runner up can reinforce a comeback.